Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: attitude

  • Loving Monday: Super Bowl XLV Hangover

    loving_mondayIt was a great game. An even better game if you were a Green Bay fan.

    The markets were jammed all morning. The roads were cluttered immediately after.

    And those of us watching the were enjoying family, friends and food with an abandon we seldom get to experience on most weekends.

    It was a great game.

    Now it’s Monday and we’re back at work… Sort of.

    Not really.

    No, not at all.

    We’re either still celebrating or still depressed.

    We could suggest something inane to the winners like, “Don’t gloat.” Or we could recommend something preposterous to the losers like, “Be good sports.”

    The fact of the matter is those of us who were rooting for Green Bay are going to be strutting and celebrating and rubbing it in every way imaginable.

    And those who were short-sighted enough to root for Pittsburgh are going to be glum, whining, making excuses, and otherwise going out of their way to be very unpleasant today.

    So how to get back to work? (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Today You Must Growl

    loving_mondayEver get tired of being told to have a good attitude?

    You know it’s a good idea. But not today. You know attitude is important. But if one more person points that out to you, you’ll scream. Today you need to be in a bad mood. Today you can barely muster the energy to pick up a pencil. Today you must growl.

    The idea behind Loving Monday is not to superficially encourage us to put on a false front and pretend to be happier, more engaged, or more dedicated than we really are.

    On the other hand, when we are authentically tired, bored, or discouraged, the solution in not necessarily to act out those feelings all over everyone else.

    Are there any other options available than stuffing our emotions or giving in to them? Is there another way forward besides either wearing a mask at your own expense or spewing venom everywhere at everyone else’s expense?

    My thought is why not have some fun with it?

    Put a sign on your door that warns, “Grumpy soldier inside, enter at your own risk.” Or, “Tie a rope around your waist before descending into this pit of exhaustion, or you may get sucked down yourself.”

    Put a peace offering of treats near your desk as a humorous way to pre-pay for their forgiveness.

    By acknowledging that you’re in a bad space, you are letting people know ahead of time what they are about to experience! How different than being ambushed by someone’s bad mood! This frees them to be cautious and more sensitive to you.

    You also create a safe atmosphere for them to give the gift of encouragement, compassion, and/or support to you on a difficult day.

    In the long term, you’ll have a better chance of returning to a more engaged, enthusiastic attitude sooner if you are honest about how far away from that attitude you are right now.

    How do you deal with a bad start to the week when you’re tired, overwhelmed or down?

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Attitude Infection

    loving_mondayHave you ever come to work to find someone in such a good mood that you can’t help but feel better yourself?

    Their attitude is infectious. Their mood, their outlook, their demeanor, their disposition, their frame of reference, whatever it is… you find yourself being drawn in and carried along.

    It’s fun. It’s refreshing. It’s a breath of fresh air in a stuffy and claustrophobic work world. It’s an unexpected gift.

    What if you were that person today?

    What if you made a decision—right here, right now—to bring the gift of a fun-loving, hard-working attitude to work today? That you would be extra positive, extra appreciative, extra helpful, extra conscientious… you take it from there with what you might do.

    The idea is simply to choose to be the source of the upbeat attitude infection.

    Nothing off the charts, simply an extra measure of good attitude. Not every day, just today. Not as some sort of grandiose mission, but more like giving a special, unexpected gift.

    Instead of donuts, flowers or coffee, your gift would be your attitude.

    Think about it. Think about trying it. Right here, right now.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Remembering The Truth About You

    loving_mondayFor too many people these days, Monday morning does not begin a new week at work. Monday begins a new week of looking for work.

    Having a bad job can wear one down, but having no job can wear one out.

    The experience of repeated rejections is difficult not to make personal and internalize.

    We lose confidence. We lose energy. We begin to think that we might be the problem and not the economy.

    It is in this situation that Monday becomes a weekly opportunity to pause and remind ourselves of the truth. The truth about ourselves, our skills, our capabilities and our character. The truth about the job market. 12% unemployment is unparalleled in our working lives. This is no ordinary cyclical recession that we can wait out.

    The title of the column, “Loving Monday,” almost sounds like someone is mocking our pain. How can we love beginning another week of hustling ourselves to a working world that has curled up into a fetal position in the corner until some undisclosed future time when it feels safe to make commitments again?

    The truth, though, is that you are a valuable professional. You bring a marvelous set of skills, perspectives, experiences, personality, attitude, and competencies.

    Regardless of the economic reality by which so many businesses find themselves constrained, you have value. Enormous value.

    This fact is the truth that needs to be reengaged each Monday morning as you launch another strenuous week of telephone calls, letters, emails, coffees, lunches, networking efforts, and interviews.

    While always tiring, while sometimes discouraging, while occasionally depressing, our continued job hunting efforts nonetheless give credence to the larger truth. The truth that we have value.

    If you need a more personal reminder of the deeper truth of your value, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Acting Up Brings Everyone Down by Nick McCormick

    Many years ago I managed a firm where I began calling my colleagues, “my kids.” This moniker was descriptive of both my affection for them and their childish behavior toward work and each other.

    Now Nick McCormick has captured a wonderful collection of the childish things people do at work. Or… I should say… the clever and common things people do at work, which are, in fact, quite childish.

    It’s called, Acting Up Brings Everyone Down: The Impacts of Childish Behavior in the Workplace.

    From the introduction”

    “The purpose of this book is to point out the silliness that we engage in at work in hopes that readers will acknowledge their actions, realize there are better and more constructive ways to act, and make the necessary changes to improve the work environment.”

    It takes a great sense of humor to get us insecure leader-types to let down our guards and see our imperfections without feeling attacked.

    McCormick, though, instead of attacking us for our petty and counter-productive behaviors, laughs at them with us.

    He takes on maddening workplace dynamics like making excuses, blaming (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Too Cheesy?

    loving_mondayLoving Monday has been the title of this column for several years now. Today it sounds a little cheesy to me.

    Sometimes when work is particularly difficult, diminishing or distressing, words of encouragement can ring hollow. So much rah rah cheerleading for the team suffering a lop-sided and humiliating loss. The sentiment is nice, but it’s not going to affect the outcome of the game.

    Go ahead and get it off your chest: “It’s easy for you to say, ‘Choose a can-do attitude!’ (Can you hear the exclamation point in the inspirational speaker’s voice?!), but I am the one having to live with the boss from hell who just cut my budget for the third time this year.”

    I hear you. I have long been an advocate for a constitutional amendment banning cheese in consultant speeches and supervisor pep talks. Offering nice sentiments that won’t affect the outcome are worse than useless.

    On the other hand… (You didn’t really think I was going to leave it there, did you?)

    On the other hand, the by-line at the bottom of this column reads, “Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves.”

    In this column we are talking about intention and choices. I am encouraging us to intend good for our work efforts and to be specific about that intention. I am encouraging us to match that clear intention with choices that will turn that intention into action.

    Far from being cheesy, we are reminding each other that how we show up at work affects our work just as much as (if not more than) the crazy things that are happening around us. We are checking in with how authentically we show up and how fully we engage.

    Whether we are going into well-ordered and effective workplaces or crazy-making and soul-crushing ones, we can love Mondays because we becoming people who know how to connect our intention with our choices and bring our full selves to the task at hand.

    Now that’s something to cheer about!

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    If you would like to discuss your situation with Karl, click here for a free 30-minute consultation.
    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Whose Opinion Matters Most

    loving_mondayHaunted by your co-worker’s recent withering and hurtful jibe at you?

    Callously insulted, we want to rise above the name-calling and ignore the petty blasts of the immature. Yet we struggle against the sneaky suspicion that there might be a kernel of truth to the slam.

    Why we give others’ opinions so much weight is probably a mystery for the ages. (Or at least for your therapist.)

    What matters most, though, is our opinion of ourselves.

    When we are overly disturbed or hurt by the jibe of another, it is usually because the words tap into something we believe about ourselves.

    While we can avoid negative people to a certain degree, a more effective way forward is to root and establish a healthy estimation of ourselves.

    When we are grounded in an accurate assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses, the words of others hold less power when they suggest something different.

    When we are secure in our strengths, then any accusations to the contrary roll more easily off our backs.

    When we are aware of our weaknesses, then hearing them echoed by others is nothing more than a restatement of reality. While never fun to come face to face with one’s less developed aspects, the twin stings of insult and injury are removed.

    Being comfortable in your own skin is no mean achievement. But it is worth the effort. Instead of your state of mind being controlled by others, your opinion of yourself rules the day.

    You can begin this week sincerely believing that there’s no one you’d rather go to work with today than you.

    If you’d like some help getting a clear, grounded assessment of yourself, give me a call today or sign up for a free 30-minute consultation.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • BlogWorld 2010 -> 7 Ways to Take Action Now

    BlogWorld BadgeThe largest Blogworld yet is behind us.

    What now?

    The hours of helpful (and not so helpful) seminars, the miles we walked on the trade floor, the networking parties, and the innumerable conversations with vendors, future partners and potential customers. We are hopefully inspired. We might be overwhelmed. We are definitely exhausted.

    We came away with many new ideas. Maybe too many! Maybe just enough so that once we get back into the grind of our busy lives, we don’t find our way to act on any of these great ideas.

    It is too easy to leave all those great ideas in that closed notebook on the desk. Too often we never get around to sifting through the computer files where we stored those ingenious tidbits that were going to transform our business.

    Here are 7 trajectories of action that you can use to guide your after-the-show efforts.

    1. Attitude Boost

    Participating and persevering in a still-emerging industry during a struggling economy requires courage, passion, and energy.

    Select one source of inspiration from the expo that resonated deeply with the challenges you face. What is one way you can transform that model, story, and/or attitude into a vehicle to recharge your juices, restore your confidence and/or rededicate your efforts?

    Take action to boost and reinforce your attitude for the work ahead.

    2. Personal Branding

    Feeling your blog is lost in a crowded sea of exponentially expanding bloggers, consultants, experts, celebrities and companies?

    Which one or two speakers at BlogWorld do you remember most clearly? Why do you think the memory is so clear? How do they describe themselves in their title, (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Shortcut to an Awful Day… A Crappy Attitude

    loving_mondayThe best case for an attitude adjustment is your own well-being.

    Sure I could go on and on about what practical wonders a good attitude will do for the team, your clients, and your boss.

    Except to do so would be essentially invalidating how frustrated, put upon, and undervalued you actually feel today.

    If you’re going to make a case for acting in any way contrary to how you’re feeling, then the case worth examining is the one related to your own happiness and effectiveness.

    If you want to have a crappy day, then let your attitude sink, wallow and fester. As accurate a reflection of your emotional state as such an indulgence might be, you’re the primary person who suffers.

    The others will simply avoid you. They have a method for reducing the impact you can have on them.

    You, though, have to be with you wherever you go. A fact of life and reality check that you should keep in mind next time you’re thinking of brandishing your mood like a weapon. The only person who has to experience all that darkness, stress and pain every single time is you.

    So do yourself a favor. Choose an attitude that helps you deal with the feelings instead of merely express them. Choose an attitude that confronts the frustration with creative alternatives instead of merely reciting the obvious injustice of it all. Choose an attitude that helps you get some perspective, reframe complexities, and experiment with constructive initiatives.

    Choose an attitude that serves your well-being.

    If you don’t, more than any harm or vengeance you feel your crappy attitude would be deservedly exacting on others, you’ll mostly be harming yourself.

    You’re smarter than that!

    On your side, (even if sometimes you aren’t)

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Greeting The Unexpected Intruder

    loving_mondayThe unexpected can sneak up on us like an intruder.

    Even something wonderful can be greeted with a frown simply because it was unexpected. It caught us off guard. We had one thing planned and now the situation has changed.

    How do you react when caught off guard? How do you greet the unexpected?

    When we come to work expecting to work along one set of plans and cannot, we have an adjustment to make. Some of us are better at adjusting than others.

    Today I want to draw our attention to one of our starting assumptions. Is the unexpected an intruder or a friend? Have we been met with a setback or an opportunity?

    Your gut answer to those two questions will help you get deeper insight about why you react to the unexpected the way you do.

    If something bad has happened, then the adjustment process is one of damage control, recovery, and getting back to what you had been doing previously.

    If something good has happened, then the adjustment process is one of triage, learning, and participating in the new creation that is emerging.

    In the one case, the ways of the past and being able to maintain control are the central dynamics.

    In the other case, the possibilities of the future and being able to discern what has value are the central dynamics.

    Reaction, control, preventing damage, and self-protection on the one hand; versus learning, discernment, participation, and new options on the other.

    When the unexpected happens today—and it will—what sort of greeting will you extend? Celebrating a welcome if unpredictable friend or complaining about an unwelcome and troublesome intruder?

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.